At the start of the actual Town Hall, I have to give a long shpiel about "Oh, this is what happens, this is what you should do". Pre-scripting is where I put all that into an easy format for me to repeat in here.

In this realm, we will be learning about the candidates for the times that shall soon befall us. Your quest is to siege them with questions about their views on moderation, to aid in your selection of the right candidates.

Some advice as your steel yourselves for battle:

There is no initiative order; feel free to ask your question(s) unprompted. Do be mindful of whether or not candidates have answered previous questions - if they get bogged down, let them have some respite. Beyond that, feel free to jump in at any time.

Candidates, use the reply feature to link questions and their answers. Failure to do so may have harmful consequences. (Hover your mouse over the left of the message, click the down arrow, click reply)

When a question is asked, I will star it - please help by starring it as well. Going forward, please do not star anything other than questions, lest we lose our in this labyrinth of text.

Once this journey is completed, we will record our efforts in our Meta site as a digest version of the town hall chat. It will detail all of the questions asked, and the responses we all received

There may be reinforcements coming in with more questions, as a warning message has been posted on the main site.

A group of six enter this land, waiting for questions: @AceCalhoon, @BrianBallsun-Stanton, @CRoss, @DForck42, @Jadasc, @waxeagle

@BrianBallsunStanton I was for them initially, but at this point my stance on them is similar to my stance on other setting questions. If you can relate them actual mechanics then they are ok (land speed record builds etc). But if they are just speculative, or purely joke questions they've gotta go.

@BrianBallsunStanton If the question is essentially "solve a physics problem in RPG trappings" it's off topic, and should be closed as such, deleted if necessary. If the question is "How do I model X aspect of reality in Y game", that's ok, and probably just needs a little comment nudge to keep it focused and on topic.

@Rob how we deal with campaign research and system recommendation questions. I think we need to renew some meta discussion on campaign research specifically. (I've got a post floating in my head, but haven't put it down to screen yet)

@Rob The huge numbers of edge-case games. Part of the way I'm solving the problem is making sure we're actually running games (and a high proportion of indie games too) to build expertise and attract non-mainstream gamers. Functionally, we need to make sure to not be "all D&D all the time." and the best way to do that is to have activities that appeal to those players to attract experts to generate and answer questions with real standing.

@Rob going through the review queue, one major thing that i've noticed is a tendacy towards keeping shorter answers, even awarding them as the accepted answer, even if there's very little context to the answer itself. My solution would be to encourage the community to encourge more detailed answers, such as many that @brian-ballsunstanton usually provides

@Rob Bringing in new users in a friendly and productive way. We're starting to be a little bit known, but there's a big difference between being a positive contributor here and on your generic RPG forum. We need to welcome new users actively, and gently point them to the FAQ and good examples. We need to close/delete bad examples when encouraging the user to change doesn't help. We can't turn away new users, and we can't allow new users to change what makes the site work.

Two highly respected members of the community get in a comment war on a question. They both flag each other's comments and are cussing and it is clear that this is beyond a heated argument. What do you do, what don't you do?

@TimStone Good question. Lock down comments and bring them both to a (probably private) chat. This is something that needs moderation and cooling down. By changing the situation and being able to have people state grievances, it takes the problem outside the public eye. If that persisted, I would impose cooling off periods (equitable) for both of them, with an attempt to have dialogue in the venues that were still open. Engaging in their comment stream beyond a simple...

@TimStone i wouldn't jump into the argument for either side. I would comment that both need to take their argument to chat, then clear the comments. If they both get too heated and start to actually take it out on eachother (downvoting, etc.) then they'll both get suspended (probably for a day).

@GraceNote Valuable is a function of acceptance by the community. The best recent edge-case of that was the rash of backticking proper nouns. While the highlighting is somewhat useful, the edit-spam and the... "let's code-indicate everything" eventually caused me as normal user to comment with a "hey, can you only format according to our recent meta discussion?"

@BrianBallsunStanton I'm in favor of allowing them to remain open, so long as the question has applicability to more than one game and it doesn't seem like they're simply thought-experiments or "whittling."

In order for any online community to thrive, it must grow, which means retaining new users. As a moderator, you play a huge role in converting a first-time contributor into a recurring one. What actions will you take to nurture our new users?

@GraceNote Figure out what the problem is and ask them to address that part of their posts. Either in the comments or in chat. Failing either of those two a message outlining what I think is the problem

@Kalamane the first thing that i leanred is that, there has to be community involvement with the site when making decisions. part of the issue we had was that we couldn't get anyone interested in the meta discussions after the first couple of months. the second thing i learned is that the fun questions (the one's that arent' very deep) are good to attract traffic, but you have to have deeper questions to keep most of yoru traffic

@FRandallFarmer Immediate positive and negative feedback. Beyond voting, comments are a great way to shape behaviour. An "attaboy" comment immediately after a good first post links the validation of the comment and the rep with the quality of the post. Just like in education, reward the actions you like, punish the actions you dislike. Comments are one of the best ways to do that. Beyond that, expanding the reach of the site through recommendations in appropriate venues and game stores is a job ..

@FRandallFarmer Get a welcome in as early as possible, and try to point them to the FAQ and good examples. It's important with new users to give positive re-inforcement for things that are even basically good (upvotes, positive comments). You have to make clear the rules early, or set the site up for a more painful breakup later.

@FRandallFarmer I think an initial welcome comment is key, even if that comment isn't exactly positive towards their question and is accompanied by a down or close vote, a friendly welcoming "hey this is why this is good" or "hi, this is why this is bad" is key.

@FRandallFarmer This is one I've not entirely figured out. My main response at the moment: 1. Communicate as much as possible (whys, specifically, especially if a close or clarification is needed); 2. Go the extra mile to make their posts shine; 3. Weight upvoting a bit higher for new users.

@FRandallFarmer Also in the past, we've had some success inviting people who make it to 20 rep, but are confused to chat to talk about it. It tends to give people a better view, and a quicker intro into the culture. We should probably bring that back.

@Kalamane I'm a mod on Chrisianity stackexchange, and we had a huge turnout initially with some serious quality issues, however the way we handled it knocked our traffic off rather dramatically. One of the things I learned through that was that you have to address major site issues carefully and effectively.

@TimStone Major issues is defined as "I can't edit this into shape." So therefore the comment function. I tend to request for clairification often, especially when the requirements are unclear. We should have a discussion on meta, however, about preemptive closing to avoid getting bad-answers that then lock the question into a bad form.

@TimStone This is a tough one. Major issues are a comment followed by a close. If the issue is easily fixed then I might edit instead of closing, but mostly the user needs to come back and learn from their mistake so closing is the right call

Jeff Atwood, co-creator of Stack Exchange, suggested that this platform isn't a perfect fit for all communities. Personally, I see some clear differences between this community and the IT-related communities, such as Stack Overflow. What differences do you see and how would you work to adapt our policies (and possibly suggest technology improvements?) to improve the "fit"?

@FRandallFarmer one of the big issues with retaining new users is that, their first question or two usually sucks, or iust off-topic for the site. just closing their question saying "blargh this doesn't belong here!" will immediately upset them. what i liek to do is to take a personal approach, being nice and saying that i regretfully have to close their question (and i honestly do hate doing it), but i also give them guidelines on what to do and where the resources are.

i also encourge them to visit our meta if they don't understand why their question was closed

@FRandallFarmer As a tech improvement, getting a gaming venue more integrated will help build an active chat community. (though this is something that's solvable with various other apps out there, it means that people aren't on the site gaming.) One of the best ways to generate questions is to have active-games with a mindset towards question asking. As a policy improvement? We've actually had great success with the good-subjective/bad-subjective policies from parenting. It helps us to define...

@FRandallFarmer Every community is different, and the stack model isn't right for everyone. But at the same time we've adapted it to our community fairly well. It works exceptionally well for rules question. Less well for sys-rec/DM advice questions. But with the Good Subjective/Bad Subjective criteria that have come out thanks to sites like programmers, it's much easier to run a more subjective site like this

@FRandallFarmer It definitely isn't a perfect fit for every community, but I think one of the main advantages of RPG.SE is the blending of the RPG community and the SE community, it provides a community with the wit of the RPG community, but is results and format oriented like the SE community. As far as tech improvements, the biggest thing I'd like to see is more flare like gaming has. RP'ers are big on our achievements, and I can see some of the Gaming contests going over well here.

Do you feel like a representative percentage of the community participates in your site's meta? Based on that, how strongly do you think feedback presented on meta should factor into your decision making as a moderator?

@Aarthi Great question. Does the answer "anything ChrisF can do I can do" work? ;). Seriously though the moderation load on Gardening is fairly light, and while C.SE is heavier it's not overwhelming. I'm already on RPG more than the other two sites I moderate so I don't see a disconnect here

@FRandallFarmer the first major difference that i've seen is that a lot of RPG users are very chatty. that's to be expected since you ahve to talk to explain all of your actions in your game. Honestly to help cut down the chatter I thinkwe need to push more users to chat.

@TimStone No, but it's the closest thing that we have to a policy consensus. If there is an answer with ten or more upvotes with few competing answers, I like to take it as "policy until future discussion."

@FRandallFarmer They're not really that different if you look at it from the angle of getting direct answers to questions. The main difference in the social aspect of other communities mean softer questions/discussions tend to creep in a little more with the thinking they're okay. Wouldn't really change anything other than to keep vigilante and suggest chat when such questions try to breach the walls

One of the things that moderators on smaller SE 2.0 sites play a key role in that moderators on larger sites don't is promotion. With RPG being classified as one of the "smaller" sites, how do you envision your role in growing the site, and what are your current specific strategies, if any?

@TimStone meta participation (like on many SE 2.0 sites) is not as good as we'd like it. However it's the only place we have for deciding site policy. If people don't like it they need to come to meta and participate. One of my goals will be driving more meta participation.

@TimStone No, but close enough. Still, this is not a pure democracy. I think the history of Gaming.SE shows that you can't govern based on whatever happens on meta. I also think we have seen RPG.SE's culture change from the early days, and not every two year old post on meta is an indicator of current state.

@casperOne I'm already running weekly games. Getting what amounts to a constantcon for us would be a fantastic win in terms of a question generating resource. I'm also asking game-authors of indie games when questions explicity concern their games. We've had good success with Vincent Baker answering questions with dogs in the vineyard, and the various references to blogs I've posted seem to reflect question-visiting rates.

@casperOne Asking questions, especially for the lesser covered questions. That's the easiest way to cover our search engine footprint. I've also been promotoing the site amongst friends. I've actualyl gottena couple of them to join the site, even if they aren't very active.

@Kalamane . I think the question that must be asked is "do the answers hold any value" if they do then attempting to return to the original question is the right thing to do. If they don't then either closing and asking the Op to start over or removing the answers and starting with a clean slate is the right thing to do

@Kalamane There's a fine line there. Sometimes the "new question" is the one the poster obviously intended to ask all along, and the answerers are confused. In that case comment on the answers to encourage them to get in line, downvoting if necessary. In teh other case it's a new question b/c they thought of an additional one. I would encourage them to post it separately, reminding them they can get more rep for it ;-).

@casperOne I see the role of moderators in this as both instigators and facilitators. On gardening right now We are working on an anniversary contest, one of our moderators instigated that and is following up on it. On C.SE however one of our users really wanted to get a blog kicked off, I'm currently facilitating that by writing the monthly topic posts and helping with scheduling etc.

@casperOne However, that kind of infrastructure (for constantly running games) would take some involvement in other platforms and active solicitation of integration. Still, that solicitation of tools will, itself, lead to more interaction.

@Kalamane I think one of the purposes of closing questions early is to prevent this (although communicating that is a challenge). As C.Ross noted, if the "new question" is a refinement, poke the existing answers for an update. If it's a secondary question, encourage splitting it into a new question.

@casperOne I'm one of the more active promoters of the site (see my badges). I've had the most success by sharing some of the great link-bait question the site has. I would continue to do this, and attempt to organize this activity as well. I also think it's well past time that we move some of our promotion out into meatspace, but that needs some more details worked out. The important thing is to keep people positive and motivated, and have fun with it.

@casperOne In an academic sense, I'm using the site to provide research material for myself (thereby promoting it among academics) and plan to make a book on the philosophy of rpgs from my answers on this site.

@casperOne also on this point, we're running a topic of the week event on movies to encourge users to ask questions about either current topics, or to help fill in some of the holes the site has. right now it's mostly run by us mods, but it's open for anyone to provide input. it's too early to tell if it's had a positive effect, but i think it has

@FRandallFarmer I agree wholeheartedly that we should protect the anonymity of the voting system. However, I almost always leave a comment when I downvote (unless there is already a negative comment I agree with). It can be hard for a new user (which is why usually for a new user I'm more likely to flag and answer/cast a close vote)

@Rob Right now, the biggest problems for RPG.StackExchange are the perceptions that it's not open to new members or new players and that it's actually the D&D Stack in disguise. The first part is covered by a later question; the second, I think, can be handled with active curation of other games by interested posters.

@Rob Special Attack: wall of academic text. I can generally cite at whatever depth of recursion necessary to provide necessary argumentation. Special Weakness: People who don't care. If there are people who don't respond well to reasoned-arguments or discussion... I don't really like bringing down punative measures save in extremis.

@FRandallFarmer They are anonymous and can discourage a new user. They can also help tweak the behavior of experienced users. As already discussed, we need to be leaving active feedback on new users posts, explaining what they're doing for good or ill. I do not see any reason to make downvotes not anonymous.

@FRandallFarmer drive-by downvotes are discouring to almost everyone. but, a couple of upvotes vastly outweight a single downvote. i like to get people to upvote good questions. if people are voting on good questions, and that question is indeed a good one, then the new user shouldn't be as discouraged. also, comments to help the user make their question better are also good.

(related to casperOne's earlier question) Your site has relatively low traffic compared to most other graduated sites on the network, though it also has an excellent answered rate. In light of this, do you feel like your site is experiencing any growing pains, and is there any aspect of how the site is currently run that you feel negatively impacts continued growth?

@Rob Special attack: "Calm down guys", helping bring a situation under control. Special weakness: questioner. I'm personally heavier in the questions than I am in the answers, and this sometimes creates a weird dynamic as moderator.

@Rob special weakness: over aggressive closer. Something I'm working on here as a normal user, and I regularly think twice about when I'm running around with a diamond. Special attack: trolls bane flame strike - Moderating C.se I've become adept at dealing with trolls.

@Rob i think my special attack is my editing abilities. my weakness is indecisiveness on closing some questions. i counter this by talkign with fellow mods to get opinions (that's why my trouble is devil's advocate)

@TimStone Growing pains? Not really. We're niche. Our questions cover products with a very long release cycle. This is something that we've learned to deal with. Dealing with D&D next will prove to be a very interesting time, especially considering their modularity. I see nothing wrong with how the site is currently run.

@TimStone I think most of the negative light on the community right now is the echo of past growing pains. I think right now we're in a very good place, with some room for improvement (mostly in terms of communication). We do show steady growth, just not in terms of massive spikes.

@FRandallFarmer I agree in part; I think it's important to separate "this is a bad answer" from "this is a bad answerer." (And, also, "a bad answer" from "a wrong answer.") I try not to downvote answers from new posters into the negatives; I also ask leading constructive questions in the comments to help steer the question in a better direction.

@TimStone I think the SE learning curve might be the only growing pain we really have. Our recent promotion with Obsidian Portal brought us a wealth of new users. But most RPG types are very used to the forum model and have to be indoctrinated into the SE way of doing things. This was rather evident with teh new users who came in from OP

@TimStone Growing pains? Not really. how the site is currently run: We've been in an awkward space for a while with many moderators, of varying styles and levels of commitment, some new, some old. I think the election will firm that up, and help us get on the same page with a new staff all dedicated and engaged.

It seems that there is a focus on reputation not equivalent to it's true function related to the community rather than the individual. How will you emphasize the community aspect as opposed to the individual aspect- or do you see that as a problem?

@wraith808 I don't see these as competing interests most of the time. Gaining reputation can only be done through posting content. This is a positive feedback loop. You post good content, the community benefits and rewards you, making you want to post more good content and improve the community.

@wraith808 Reputation is a function of community acceptance and trust of your answers. It has a personal validation function (as @waxeagle pointed out) and a community-measurment function. From a game-theoretic behaviour modification point of view, I see absolutely nothing wrong with it.

@wraith808 I don't see it as a problem. We are a community of people with diverse interests — which means that, often, we don't have the ability to measure the value of a given person's contribution to the group as a whole. Instead, we trust that highly reputed individuals are qualified and generous in their areas of expertise, and generalize from there.

@wraith808 I've not seen that as a particular problem. I see problems with community stemming from the clash of our two community sources, and the usual flaming that goes on in forums (You're playing the game wrong man, you're ruining my life!). The clash of the community sources happens when we have people with RPG forum experience and SE experience disagreeing on usage.

@DForck42 Just to amplify that. Consistency and communication are critical to both alliteration and good governance. Having protocols in place and back-channel communication methods for the mods, as well as a common understanding of what the issues of the day are makes for individual mod "absence" unnoticeable or less problematic.

@BrianBallsunStanton mmhmm, completely agree. if the mods aren't talking... then we've got problems. that's part of what happened on literature, us mods never talked with eachother, but not from lack of me trying.

@DForck42 Above all else, mods must have mental prediction models of the others' behavour in their heads, so that we don't get one mod just reversing another mod's decisions in public without a very clear and important reason.

@Kalamane Yes, yes I do. And it's now less... gorse brushy. The ability to clean pots with my beard is not necessarily a feature.

@Kalamane the reputation is a system that allows users to express what content they approve of and disapprove of. it also shows which users are providing valuable content to the site. i honestly think the rep systems works as it should. are there bugs? sure, but for the most part it works.

@waxeagle I'm a gamist/narrativist DM. I believe the rules exist to provide structure and inspiration. The rules should never be ignored on the spur of the moment, because that weakens the ability of players to function within the world by imagining future outcomes. At the same time, as a pragmatist, use the right system/tool for the job. There is no one "holy" system above all others. From an in-game PoV, I'm a highly pre-constructed character designed to meet specific goals.

The function of .SE sites tends not to foster community in a lot of cases because of the focus on answer the questions, rather than learning about each other through conversation. Someone asked earlier about promotion- but do you have any specific ideas in terms of helping to build the community around RPG.SE?

@waxeagle chaotic good. the rules are there to give us reference points, but they're not perfect and cover every aspect of life, so we have to make judgement calls to promote the greater good. also, consistancy is key.

@waxeagle I'm a fighter. I lead when I have to, but prefer to be on the front lines dealing with things myself. I value rule of law, but try to be mindful that sometimes you have to throw the rule book out the window and just hit things with a sword.

@casperOne I believe that moderators can play a role in growing the site through curation of tags — expanding the scope and breadth of the knowledge available. The recent blog post on self-answering offers some cues in how this can work.

@GraceNote I'm pleased and privileged to have undergone this ritual. I feel like I've learned a lot today.

@wraith808 I think regular gaming either in chat, on vid conf and others is a good way to foster that community. SE doesn't do "community" all that well, but it can through chat. More chat participation can help with that feeling of community

Time ticks on forwards, and so our quest comes to a close. As mentioned, the proceedings from this journey should turn up in a dedicated digest Meta post sometime in the near future. Keep yourself alert for its arrival. Candidates are free to continue any answers which were not yet finished.

Most of all, good luck to all of the candidate party! Let's have ourselves a great experience this election!

@BrianBallsunStanton Generally agree with @CRoss' answer - physics for the sake of physics or as a joke or an intellectual exercise is off topic. I was strongly for closing the goblin-bag of holding question for example, despite later protestations of "well it could happen...". Relevant to real gameplay is fine.

@Rob Attracting new users and not scaring them off. Our stats aren't all that good and aren't growing consistently, which means we are not attracting and keeping people effectively. I think reaching out to game stores, advertising on gaming sites and gaming con bulletins will help get eyes and then balancing enough moderation to not have total junk with being friendly enough that a new guy doesn't ask an honest question and get mod-closed in 30 seconds and driven off will keep them.

@TimStone Delete comments, lock the question temporarily, try to get them into chat. Most folks cool down when the comments start disappearing and further intervention is seldom needed.

@GraceNote Start by pruning comments and posting the standard "this isn't a discussion forum, comments are for clarifying answers only, please post your own answer and let voting work if you have a strong opinion" verbiage. If it persists, send them a mod message explaining the problem.

@FRandallFarmer As mentioned in my previous answer I think this is the #1 issue for our SE. I make it a goal to spend as much time constructively improving questions as I do closing them/arguing about whether they should be closed. I also wait for community close votes before mod-closing (except in egregious cases). Being welcoming - not just by saying "hi" but by shepherding questions and answers short of closing and deleting - is the way to do this IMO.